Having just encountered and reported a metric crap ton of commercial spam or spam bot posts here, it occurs to me that a solution used by several of the other boards I frequent may eliminate most of that (my local Freecycle board is one of them).

The boards I'm referring to require the first two posts by new members to be approved by a moderator before appearing on the boards. Once two posts have been approved, the user can post normally. This completely blocks any spam bots (and likely makes them very obvious), and seems to weed out non bot spammers as well.

I realize that some on this board may not be fond of the idea of someone having to approve their first few posts, but it seems that it would be a small price to pay to combat these spammers. And probably far less work for mods / admins in the long run.

Savannah: I don't know what it is, but no thread here escapes alive. You'll get 1 or 2 real answers at minimum, occasionally 10 or 12, and then we flog it until it's unrecognizable and you can't get your deposit back.

It appears like we're set up to do such a thing, but it has't been implemented. It would solve a lot of problems on the user end. Yes, it would slow down regular posts a great deal. We'd need more mods.

However, the new spam report icon is wonderful and mods can do a clean up faster than ever. Love it.

I'd like to see moderators able to delete or suspend accounts too, perhaps only in the context of spammers if people are afraid of stifling discussions. Captchas might help too, but many bots have been able to get around them.

Perhaps just some requirement that new users must post a greeting in the announce yourself forum before being able to start threads and/or 5 posts. Of course that would all require someone making a mod for it, and considering how little interaction the admins have with this board at the moment, it'll take a while.

"The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law." -- Christopher Hitchens

Trishntek wrote:Is it my imagination? Or is spamming worse than ever before? This is getting ridiculous! If there was some way to ban the author and not going through each post from that same bot.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. The amount of crap threads (besides the ones asking for tickets) is staggering. I don't understand why they can't be deleted as soon as they pop up. The first page of new posts was a solid 50% Russian and other obvious spam.

capjbadger wrote:I was a forum admin where I worked recently. At the beginning of the year, CAPTCHA was cracked. The only thing that worked to keep the spambots out was a real human verification system.

To register, you had to correctly answer the question: "Type the forth word of this sentence."Once that was in place, I wasn't banning hundreds of accounts a day. They weren't getting in at all.

-Badger

This is what we had before the upgrade, now we have captcha. It obviously does not work.

Trishntek wrote:Is it my imagination? Or is spamming worse than ever before? This is getting ridiculous! If there was some way to ban the author and not going through each post from that same bot.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. The amount of crap threads (besides the ones asking for tickets) is staggering. I don't understand why they can't be deleted as soon as they pop up. The first page of new posts was a solid 50% Russian and other obvious spam.

Personally, I don't want to babysit the board 24/7. I get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee and then delete spam. The other mods do that too when they are on. The board is moderated by humans who sleep now and then.

(((((((((((AntiM))))))))))))))We appreciate all you and the other mods do and we are on your side! This is not a complaint about the mods in general or you in particular. The ADMIN needs to implement some kind of screening process for newcomers,,,,, jus' sayin'

capjbadger wrote:I was a forum admin where I worked recently. At the beginning of the year, CAPTCHA was cracked. The only thing that worked to keep the spambots out was a real human verification system.

To register, you had to correctly answer the question: "Type the forth word of this sentence."Once that was in place, I wasn't banning hundreds of accounts a day. They weren't getting in at all.

capjbadger wrote:I was a forum admin where I worked recently. At the beginning of the year, CAPTCHA was cracked. The only thing that worked to keep the spambots out was a real human verification system.

To register, you had to correctly answer the question: "Type the forth word of this sentence."Once that was in place, I wasn't banning hundreds of accounts a day. They weren't getting in at all.

capjbadger wrote:I was a forum admin where I worked recently. At the beginning of the year, CAPTCHA was cracked. The only thing that worked to keep the spambots out was a real human verification system.

To register, you had to correctly answer the question: "Type the forth word of this sentence."Once that was in place, I wasn't banning hundreds of accounts a day. They weren't getting in at all.

-Badger

This is what we had before the upgrade, now we have captcha. It obviously does not work.

Yeah, they cracked it right around new years 2010/2011. I was getting hammered by bots (like eplaya is now) every day until we put in the non-CAPTCHA system.

At least I was able to ban the accounts. Granted they just created new accounts.It's completely stupid they you are not given the ability to ban obvious spambot accounts.

You will continue to be hammered with spam posts until you switch away from CAPTCHA.